Populating MN9 with flash memory - can't find memory

I would like to populate the NAND flash footprint on this board. The schematic calls for MT29F2G08ABDWP, but I can't find this part anywhere.

Which compatible replacement part do you recommend and where could I buy it?

Thanks
Philip

While we were testing NAND, we encountered a lot of CRC errors over a longer period of usage (writes/reads). The number of bad CRC sectors were rising, resulting in unable to load OS from NAND. We didn't get a clear response from ATMEL why this happens but as far as we understood from them, it's related to their implementation of atmel_nand.

High delivery cost

Hi Mini-Box team!

You have a great product with a really affordable price. But there is one issue - shipping costs.
Board + LCD costs about $104, shipping (to Ukraine - my location) costs $205. Nonsense.

regards,
Alex

I think you choose the "no risk" shipment method by UPS and that's right the shipping from US to Ukraine is that much because of the distance and risk they assume for it. There are two other methods of shipping, cheaper, but on your risk:You can use: Express Mail® International for $47.05, or Priority Mail® International for $37.50For more information please contact our sales department on: sales-queries at mini-box.com

Hi all!

Sorry to bust in like this, but could you add some mini PCIe GSM/GPS devices that work with this board?

Hi Daniel and thank you for your input. Would you like to create a page on our wiki and share complete information about your working? You have to make an account and then to create that page. Thank you

I have started writing the page in Debian. I don't really understand mediawiki's formatting stuff.. so feel free to format it how you like. At the moment I can't get the second bank of RAM to be accessible and I'm trying to get the perfect kernel config.. compiling on the board itself takes a while. ;)
I'll finish up the page later on and fill it out a bit more.

Hi, Daniel. I published a link to the Debian page on the main page, here. If you have any progress you would like to share, please update that page and I will arrange it to wiki format for you. Thank you.

As part of getting Debian working on the board I've prepared a few small patches (mainly so that we don't have to use someone else's board type).. Do you guys mind me submitting them for inclusion in the kernel? I'm not sure if they would go in, but its worth a try.

I have basically copied the board file that was being used and cleaned up the stuff for the LEDs etc.. and added them to the Kconfig so that you can select the right board :) And added some fixes from other places like enabling the pwm led driver for at91. I've got a pretty clean config that can be used as a defconfig for the board as well.

I'm having trouble getting the second bank of RAM to be usable in 3.1. I need/want to use 3.1 because of fixes/improvements in the mmc driver.
I noticed that you have a patch in the arm linux tracker for 2.6.32. I can't for the life of me get this working (it seems some of the arm memory mapping stuff has changed).
Apparently reordering the banks so that the lower addressed one is first, enabling highmem support and loading the kernel to the lower bank works (near the end of this post -- http://lists.arm.linux.org.uk/lurker/message/20110726.133702.b4d4e58f.en.html).

Do you have any thoughts? Everything is running great.. but only with 128MB of RAM.

The Atmel MCI driver is fixed in the 3.1rc? series. I'm running 3.1.0rc4 right now. Apparently, it has some improvements over the older driver like the ability to use the DMA controller. Atmel seems to have been fairly active lately.

I have the kernel loading into the lower bank of RAM now..

-I- Card size: 1886 MB

-I- Copy "linux.bin" from SdCard to 0x20000000

-I- load: 20008000 jump: 20008000

-I- Loading to 0x20007fc0 with size 0x001947e8

-I- MEDSdcard init

So I see this instead

Ignoring RAM at 70000000-77ffffff (vmalloc region overlap).

I think now we can have a decent memory setup.. instead of having the lower bank mapped after the high bank.

I couldnt that you had done anything to the upstream source.. so I've created a clone. I will merge my patches into my clone. You can then pull/clean up anything you what to put into the official version.

... doesn't seem to work for me!
I tried with a couple of different udev rules on Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10 ... no success, 'adb devices' comes up empty, although 'lsusb' lists the device as:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 18d1:9018 Google Inc.

Some strange effect with the 'Eclair' image - the device doesn't show up at all! Any ideas how to make this work - it's a nice board, but basically useless as a development platform right now.
Regards,
Steffen Elste

Hi,
I just writed and installed my MicroSD with Angstrom Linux and start my card with power on mini USB and ethernet port connected on my router...
My router tell me the ethernet connexion is not running. Then I don't know the IP address of the pico card and can't connect via RSH. Is it a bug or have I first to connect with serial port to configure Linux / Ethernet ?
Best regards. Jacques

I restarted the MicroSD Linux installation with a Windows 7 computer. With WinImage tool, I verified the image is correct. It seems OK : I constructed an image of MicroSD after burning and I saw the Linux files in the image. Then I restarted the card with Ethernet. Now, my router tell me there is a connexion, and the Ethernet LED's are active. OK.
Now, can I connect me over Ethernet with rlogin, SSH, or telnet ?
What is the predefined password for root ?

Hello,
To connect on the card over Ethernet, we need to know the IP address of picosam9.
But, each time we restart the card a new (randomized) MAC address is used. Then, DHCP provides a new IP address to the card at each reboot... Please How can we stabilize the eth0 MAC at boot ?

I inserted an Option GTM617W modem in a pico-SAM9G45 board. The modem is detected and after enabling the hso driver in the kernel the serial ports are setup correctly. However when I reboot the board (without power-cycling) the modem is not detected anymore! To get the modem working again without power-cycling I have to pull the PERST# on the mini PCI express port to 0V. When I release this pin the modem is detected again. I also tried to reset the usb hub by shortening C74, but that does not make the modem detectable again. For now we have a workaround by connecting PERST# to USR1. And in the OS when the modem has not been detected just toggle the USR1 gpio and wait for the kernel to detect it again.

We also have another 3g modem (Huwei E770) but this modem is sometimes not detected (conditions to be detectable are very random). Hub reset or PERST# toggle do not help much.

Now comes the interesting part: When I insert one of the modems above into an USB to mini pci express converter it is impossible to not detect the modem! (everything works as expected)

I suspect the 3.3v power supply on the pico-SAM9G45 board from not delivering enough power to the pci bus, causing the 3g modem in a undesirable state.

I just tried it with 15V and 5V on the external power supply and I connected the board with microUSB. All gave the same result. (GTM617W modem, powerup works fine, after reboot it is not detected, after toggling PERST# it is detected again)

The Option GTM671W (only 3g part, wifi uses the pci lanes) 3g modem finally works correctly on the pico-SAM9G45 board. But due to some mini pci express violations an adapter board with some disconnected lines had to be used!

The lines 47, 49 and 51 are defined as reserved. However, the pico-SAM9G45 connects 5V to it. When this modem is used directly it becomes very hot and it is sometimes not detected as an usb device. When the modem stays on for several hours it becomes broken due to the high temperatures, this renders the modem useless and it becomes detected as another device.

To connect this modem to the pico-SAM9G45 board an adapter board is needed because the modem is half-height. On this board the lines 47, 49 and 51 MUST be scratched. After this modification the modem functions correctly.

The question remains why does the pico-SAM9G45 connect 5V to these lines? It is not in the mini pci express 1.2 specification (5V isn't even mentioned there). Is this to be fixed in a future hardware revision?

The HUAWEI EM770 3g modem finally works correctly on the pico-SAM9G45 board. But due to some mini pci express violations an adapter board with a disconnected line had to be used!

Line 20 is defined as W_DISABLE#. According to PCI Express Mini Card Electromechanical Specification Revision 1.2 October 26, 2007, page 48 the modem must pull-up this signal when it implements this function. However, the pico-SAM9G45 connects 3.3V to it. When this modem is used directly it is not detected as an usb device.

When I put an adapterboard in between and scratch line 20 the modem functions correctly!

The question remains why does the pico-SAM9G45 connect +3.3V to this line? It is not very clear to me in the specification but I don't think de-asserted means just connect 3.3V to it, because the card already has a pull-up on this line. Is this to be fixed in a future hardware revision?

I have not been successful generating and compiling the Angstrom build by following the instructions on the Mini-box site. Running the setup-scripts and oebb.sh generates a directory structure that is different than the one specified by Openembedded. I think this is part of the problem There is no mention in the instructions on any mods to local.conf or BBPATH. When I try MACHINE=picosam9 bitbake gpe-image it eventually states 'there is nothing to build'. I have twice built kernel/fs using Openembedded/Angstrom on Atmel devices and there were issues (always issues with Linux) but they were fixed with available patches, etc.

Hello,
I use the Angtrom precompiled OS. When I try to mount a filesystem on NFS ressource or Samba ressource I have an error (example for nfs : no such device). Is NFS or CIFS compiled in kernel ? Anyone have succes with networked filesystem ?
Regards

Need help with powering up pico-SAM9G45 -- Jphil 02:50, 10 June 2012 (MDT)

I just got my pico-SAM9G45, power adapter and 4.3 LCD screen. all are connected and I have loaded android image on an SD card, not microSD card.

I plugged everything in and powered it up, nothing shows up on the screen.

Are there some basic steps to get it going, first time using this type of motherboard and system, what am I missing?